kainasylum

A recent reminder of my mortality brought some things to the surface...

When my father was dying, I asked him if he had any plans.
He said he was going to recover and write more articles for the Korean newspaper.
I asked him what he would write about.
He said he would write about important things.
He just wanted to write.  He wanted to be important.  He wanted to be remembered.  He just did not want to be dead.

He did not know that I was asked to sign the paper that would end his kidney dialysis treatments so that he could finally die.

I asked him that question because I needed to know if he was ready to die.
His life would end... but I wanted it to be on his own terms.

I asked him if he had any words of wisdom about life... about his life.  Anything he thought about in the recent months he had been bedridden in the hospital.  He didn't have anything to say about life and was annoyed that I would ask such a question.  He then asked me if I was here to find out about "Operation Jasper" in Vietnam... because he will never talk to anybody about that unless I was his commanding officer.

I signed the paper.  Because he never did.  He died on my terms instead of his.

In the following years, I would ask myself if I did the right thing... if his death was premature... if his life was fulfilled enough to where some part of him may have felt closure about the whole thing.

I began to examine the lives of others... of myself... but especially the lives of old people.  I could not help wonder if the elderly thought about their own mortality a lot.  That concept is horrifying to me.  The prospect and fear of dying quickly consumed me after that day; I am running out of time... and I'm not ready.

The questions I wanted my father to answer on his deathbed were...

1. Are you ready?
2. Why or why not?

I could not get these answers from him.  These types of answers can only come from the self.  It was my father's inadvertent last gift to me... those questions became my personal compass.  I want my answer to the first question to be yes, and I intend to have a solid answer for the second question complete with tangible conditions of satisfaction.

A recent reminder of my mortality brought some things to the surface.  Brandee the unicorn let me borrow her book: The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.  It was a lecture he gave to his students knowing that he was dying from pancreatic cancer.  In actuality, it was a lecture for his children who would grow up without him.  I saw the video last year, and it touched me deeply.  Reading the book revitalized some of the triggers and solidified the concepts I had formed from watching that video of a dying man's last lecture.

Everybody takes away their own things from a lecture.  Here is how I filtered it:

• Get the fundamentals down or else the fancy stuff won't work
• When you're screwing up and nobody is saying anything to you anymore, then that means they've given up
• Focus on people, or else your potential will always be limited
• Storytelling is the ultimate universal context that justifies our actions as human beings and serves as the core of our motivations
• Get a feedback loop and listen to it
• Time is the only resource we truly own, and we have only a finite amount

It is Christmas Eve.  I have grown to dread this part of the year because it reminds me of just how not-like-the-others my world really is.  I am home alone because my only remaining family (my mother) is working today and tomorrow.  Logistics work out easier for her if I visit her at work.  We will most likely have Christmas dinner at some Asian restaurant somewhere in Houston.  This is partially why I left Austin for France... because that way, I would at least have an excuse for being home alone on Christmas Eve.

Time.... we only have so much of it left... and we keep wanting things.  How is it that I am 34 years old, but I still live my life like a kid who just moved out of his parents' home?  Because I keep thinking that home exists elsewhere.  Except there is no elsewhere for me... and that truth only becomes apparent during this one short time of the year.  So I typically just shut down in December... Wake up in January and forget that December ever happened.  This is how I have been able to prevent things from changing all these years.

I realize now that my little idiosyncrasies have manifested in various productive and destructive ways over the years.  I own these idiosyncrasies, now... There is no reason I can't just paint my own picture of the world for myself and others.

I'll start simple:  I want a non-awkward Christmas... The kind that most people dread because they have to spend time with their stressful family.  That sounds like a blast!  I can make it happen.  I can make my house feel like a home.  I can bring it to a point where my mom might even enjoy visiting my "home" when she feels like going on a "holiday".  That sounds like a good goal to have.

Maybe next year, I can introduce my mom to that Christmas feeling in a Christmased house... I don't really know what that means, but I think I can fake it til I make it to be just like the rest of you.

Start with one hero.
Remove the hero's identity.
Reset everything.
Will that hero still be a hero?

If you challenge a being's faith in reality, then a new reality will emerge.
Reality is identity.
Living things eventually fix themselves.

Flip a coin: Either way, things you touch will change.

George C. Vaillant met his wife at the age of 29 in 1930. He was a prominent anthropologist working on pre-Columbian Aztec digs. She was the daughter of a successful expatriate American banker. Together, they had a storybook romance. His son would be born 4 years later in 1934; George C. Vaillant was 33 at the time. At the age of 35, he gave up the excavation lifestyle and settled down in the world of museums and universities. The family of three led a charmed life. During the time of the Great Depression, they employed a nurse, a maid, and a cook within their household. George C. Vaillant continued his life as a successful museum curator, professor, published writer, and father... until 1945.

At the age of 44, George C. Vaillant was found by his wife... dead in their own back yard from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

His son, George E. Vaillant (Jr.), was 10 years old at the time. He was the last to see his father alive.

( The Life of Junior )

His father's traumatic suicide was a double-edged sword that had changed his life forever. He gave up his own persistent Communion to become a manifestation of Agency to give his father's death meaningful context. George E. Vaillant died at the age of 10 when his father died, and in that child's place emerged an insatiable unbridled formless energy that would help millions around the world understand what may have happened to his father that day in their back yard.

Inspired by this article

Like is when you are willing to share an experience.
Love is when you are willing to share an identity.

The absence of both, shared experience and identity, is neither like nor love... It is resource management.

I am thankful for my friends and lovers who graciously offer me an identity when I don't know who I am.

Goodwill, here.  Kain is away at the moment, and so I figure I would hijack his journal to give away his deepest secret: The reason why.

He is looking for context. Meaning.  We all are.  Like most of us, he wants to know that the things we did do matter, that we matter... and that the suffering and effort meant something - nothing wasted.  The narrative has a happy ending when the random set of generic events come together in a system that makes sense to him... with every observable action having meaningful context.  The entropy of the world makes sense when everything has a context... As if the universe were a living sentient entity that one could have a real two-way relationship with.

Every conversation we have, every movie we see, game we play, thing we read, in everything we do, we seek context that promises the potential to affect our future thoughts in a never-ending drive to modify our own internal genetic algorithms.  Anything without personal context ultimately renders the experience empty or irrelevant.

We try so very hard to seek that relationship with our universe.  It is the only way we know how to interact with our world: as a relationship with a sentient being. full of context.  empathy.  with likes and dislikes.  To have a relationship with an entity is to have control over how that entity affects us.  This control manifests as an identity: the labels that we allow ourselves to wear and the verbs implied by those labels.

We are not looking for truth.  We never were.  We never are.  We are looking for what the truth would promise us: meaning. emotional context. an identity we can call our own. understanding. control. peace with what we believe to be our own truths. validation from an "other".

We seek out this context in the various forms of media and interactions that reflect back at us... mixing ourselves with ingredients to experience the alchemy that makes us... Gravitating towards the edges of silhouettes that belong to forms worthy of our recognition.

So when that little voice in your head tells you to be afraid or just lay down, play it safe, and take it easy, then ask yourself:
"Why not? The truth is... we're all gonna fucking die someday... so let's just do this."

Our emotions, both good and bad, are driven by our own context... and suffering is the currency through which we acquire validation.

 From Glenda and Matthew...
"When you answer somebody's questions, then that is advice.
But if you give advice without being asked, then that is judgement."

The weird thing is... I can understand that mother's mind (WARNING, THESE ARE GRAPHIC IMAGES):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1168424/I-send-son-heaven-Hell-Chilling-moment-mother-executes-boy-firing-range.html

I would not have completely understood these motivations a few months ago had I not been touched by the madness, myself.  Events over the last few months with somebody who believed she was "Lilith" and the effect it had on me have brought me to understand the link between madness and one's drive to be significant.  That one thing that people look for is the most powerful drive in a person's psyche.  We find comfort in having a form to internalize, an identity to covet, validation that we do exist... and the easiest thing to do is to leave the source of that significance up to faith... Meaning bestowed from the great unknown... Invisible to the human eye but real to the beholder because our perceptions are as real as we make them.

We can make them, and then we can act on them... all in our wonderful little vacuum of existence.

And so once again, I am reminded that...
The will to be significant is more powerful than the will to live.
... and this is the first step towards making your own Heaven and Hell.

"It happened again, today.  That feeling of madness that sets in when you suddenly get a flash of seeing and knowing more than your brain can hold.  It feels like being in a giant dark empty room the size of the universe, and all that's in it is yourself and the plain white chair that you are sitting on... the walls far beyond what your eyes can fathom.  No matter which direction you look, you see the same 360-degree view.  I lost it... and I had to scream, and then I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could until I was exhausted.  And then it became clear.  I don't know how, but I think I know why you're doing this, Goodwill."

"Do you, now?"

"You think that in this maddening chaos, I'll see the pattern... the truth that I choose to ignore in my desperate cling to order through the things I do that bring me closer to a life that makes sense to most people."

"See anything you like?"

"I saw the lives of people in middle America... with as much energy and ambition to be a hero as I have... they wish to be something great before they die, yet they are unable to do anything but live their life as they can because their chances for options were limited.  These weren't just people in middle America, these were people everywhere... close to me and far away.  Trapped inside their bodies living a mundane existence, relegated to a life of survival, screaming to escape... being held up by one thing."

"And what was that one thing?  Something you don't have, perhaps?"

"They have a home that feels like home... with people around them that they see on a regular basis."

"What is it that you are afraid of more than anything else in this world, Kain?"

"That nobody will notice... that I'll always feel homeless."

"After all is said and done, you are nothing special, Kain.  You're a piece of shit... just like everyone else."

"I don't know why I let you talk to me like this.  You are a fucked up dumb stuffed animal that I got at a Thrift store!"

"Embrace the entropy.  You're the one who gave me life."

"Goodwill... "

"It doesn't matter what I am.  What will you do now, Kain?"

"I will become a caricature of a human being to those who can see me.  I'll give them a fantasy that I will never be able to live up to when examined closely."

"And what good would this do?"

"I've tried being an agent of order for a long time, now.  Something is not working.  It is time for me to become an agent of chaos.  We'll see what happens."

"Every creation is preceeded by destruction.  Every destruction is preceeded by creation.  You need both.  Order will naturally invite opportunities for entropy, and only in chaos will you see the mathematical pattern arise from what seemingly starts out as noise."

We all say that we are self aware.  Hardly anyone ever says that they're not... but how do I know if I'm really all that aware?  How do we know if anyone is really that aware when they will always tell you that they are?

INPUT
Awareness of the what streams of information exist around us and how we filter those streams would govern our ability to adopt optimal streams for our own purposes.

SORTING
Awareness of how we process the information that we take in allows us to examine that process and make adjustments to our machine as needed.

OUTPUT
The people around us make up the relevant world that we interact with, and the shape of our interactions are the result of the way we use the information that we decide to adopt.  We have an effect on the people around us whether or not we intend for that effect.  At any one time, we have a choice to either blame external entities for misperceiving our output or dealing with the results of that misperceived output by clarifying and/or adjusting the way we transmit our signal.  This signal we transmit is the only window that others have into our own existence.

Taking responsibility for our awareness...

• of what we take in
• how we sort
• and what we transmit

... empowers us to command our sphere of existence as we convert...

• WILL (communion - the drive to be)
• to ACTIONS (agency - the drive to do).

Naturally, we are not alone; this world is full of actions driven by the will of sentient beings.  Interactions with any sentient being involves an exchange, SHARING, or clash of intentions.  Being neutral simply makes you a pawn for the intentions of others who manifest their wills in specific areas that they have found opportunity in.  If you give up your will to be aware within any of those three categories (input, sorting, output), then somebody else will happily provide a reality for those three categories on your behalf.

To be unaware of yourself and others is to become a passenger in the universe... and quite possibly a victim to the will of others.

This problem is made visible by patterns.  Strip away the variables and identify the constants.  Every problem has a start point and a desired end point... The solution is a series of smaller problems.

Time is the only ingredient that we do not control.  It imposes its will upon us, and we have no choice but to abide by its constraints.

Glenda and Matthew, I love you :)

There is a certain force in everyone's lives that drives them to seek proof of their existence.  Once a source of proof is established, then we develop an attachment to that source... an addiction, even.  We gravitate towards that which gives us definition... a form that we are willing to adopt as our very own... whether it becomes that of an athelete, a fighter, a lover, an artist, an entertainer, or a skilled craftsman.  The deeds we embark on represent that outward flow of the energy within us to manifest as something tangible in the material world.

Being inherently intangible, the concept of "love" takes on a form of its own within the mind of its beholder.  We start out learning what it is supposed to mean in our early lives by watching our caretakers.  Eventually, we embark on our own evolution of the concept through the relationships we develop over the years... incorporating what works and throwing away what doesn't work in our quest to find the ideal definition of this intangible concept.

Through trial and error, the models of attachment become apparent as sources of reference.  We all have those models in one form or another:

• puppy love
• the one that got away
• the one that was tragically destined to fail
• going through a phase
• the mystery that eventually becomes uncovered
• the indulgence
• the mistake
• the fucked up one

Through these models, we learned pieces of how to love, how to suffer, and how to be the heroic or villainous self that we think we want to be.

Each broken attachment results in mourning followed by an opportunity to redefine our reality as we think it should be, and through defining that reality, we define who we are as a person... and then we get attached to that definition and seek validation for this self-identity that we have developed from the living sentient mirrors around us that would reflect our transmitted image back at us.  Those of us who seek to participate in society are and always will be hard wired to seek validation from external sources for the identity that we choose to become attached to.  It is why a lot of us do the things we do.

And so the cycle begins anew.  Collect.  Sort.  Transmit.  This is the nature of our addiction to the living sentient mirrors around us.  Once we see the pattern, we gain the option to break the pattern.

So find those mirrors that reinforce our best reflections, and use those reflections to magnify the best versions of ourselves... So that we may evolve.

And yes, there is a game concept in this entry.  The name of the game will be Metaphor.  If I am ever to do anything with my life beyond just work and survive, it would be this... and it has to be soon.

One thing a day.

Yesterday, I realized what an amazing privilege it is to have a friend that you share a common meta-vocabulary with.  One can easily find people that speak the same language (i.e. English), but it is so very rare to find somebody who might share the same level of mindsets and thought spaces to the point where a conversation almost feels like internal monologue.

 Lately, I'm finding these irregular meetings with Quoc to bring up delta-inducing thoughts worth noting:

• Experiments have shown that shocking a rat at random intervals will eventually result in the rat afraid to do anything... and so it just sits there and does nothing.  Personal translation: Barriers of fear caused by intermittent negative reinforcement can result in symptoms of depression where the brain is unable to generate enough energy to overcome those barriers... sometimes taking the form of "think exhaustion"... where thinking becomes a tiresome activity in itself
• Cultural Power Distance Index (PDI): [http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/power-distance-index/]  This can be described as the degree to which a culture is inclined to defer to heirarchy as their place on the totem pole... complacent with their identity in asymetrical relationships.  Incidentally, Asian cultures and France are pretty high on that rating while Western cultures, such as the United States, are low on that rating.  What this means is that the chain of command is much more authoritarian in France and Asia than here in the U.S.  There seems to be a correlation between PDI ratings and the use of honorifics in the language

I went to two different social gatherings last night.  Tre's Rock Band party was very casual, relaxed, and full of people who reached out.  I had to reluctantly leave to meet a Vietnamese acquaintance of mine nameed Victor from the college days whom I had not seen in a long time.  We were to rendezvous with some of his friends in downtown.  His friends were also Vietnamese, college educated, and from the old world (meaning they still have accents).  They were very insular and spent most of the night drinking and going club hopping to meatmarket bars where the music was too loud to have conversation.  Four of them were coupled... possibly married, and they were in their late 30s at the youngest, making them likely to be the oldest folks in the bars that they were choosing to go to.

Note to self: Never let myself fall into a situation like that ever again.  The meat-market bar scene is not my bag, and neither is hanging out with insular Vietnamese adults who are trying to catch up on feeling like they are cool.

As I was watching the interactions between the male-female pairs within the group, I could not help but feel that they were following a script that I might have seen on TV.  And then it dawned on me: Their worlds make sense to them.  The script is meaningful.  The people were happy with a mate that has obvious and predictable happy buttons because it is like having a puppy who will love you if you pet him.  The "obvious happy buttons" factor would allow for the other half's self identity to fit an unambiguous role, reinforced by the partner's behaviors in response to that role.  The script followers engaged in asymetrical relationships where their sense of superiority were complementary and orthogonal to each other.

Definitive quote:  "My man can be a dog sometimes, but I know how to keep him in check."

I do not see this level of script following amongst most of my Western friends.  Juli made an observation that American culture tends to favor partner relationships while Asian culture tends to value asymetrical relationships.

Conclusions:

• High PDI cultures will gravitate towards a sense of identity that involves asymetrical relationships in both, business and romance, as a means maintaining familiarity with how the world works... or at least how the world is supposed to work
• Low PDI cultures will gravitate towards a questioning of established thought structures as a manifestation of the individual's quest to become a self-sufficient unit.
• The word "partner" is more prevalent in low PDI cultures, while the word "duty" is more prevalent in high PDI cultures
• I have unknowingly carried a seething disdain for high PDI cultures without knowing that there was an official term for them

Our three forces seek an equilibrium with reality by emitting signals whenever we are heading towards something unsustainable with our body, our surroundings, and our spirit.  In our journey of collecting resources and sorting them to our liking, we inherently develop a goal for the way the world should be sorted... those things we "need to experience" before we die and lose it all.  Sometimes, the "shoulds" are dependent on mind and body to comply, and sometimes they are a burden we place on the world around us to comply with our expectations of the way things should be.

This is where our sense of entitlement comes from.  We feel entitled to HAVE, DO, and BE certain things, and anything less than that is seen as a loss of our self-intended identity's equilibrium with perceptual reality.  Entitlement is not a bad thing, but our expectations on ourselves and the world around us don't always pan out the way we think they "should".  At that point, we have a choice of either maintaining our current expectations in the hopes of garnering a different future outcome based on changes in external variables, or we can internally change our expectations to seek a different notion of equilibrium.

Human brains are inherently not wired to incorporate time and distance into our perceptions of comparative value.  We never stray very far from the baby's fascination with what is right in front of us; our brains are hard wired to want what we see, and accept what we see as the pieces that make up our reality, which then contributes to the identity that we feel entitled to.  To go beyond the here and now takes mental discipline.  An infinite supply of mental discipline would give a person the ability to perceive the value of things beyond time and space... but the farther you go, the farther you peer into the distance and into the future, the more you lose yourself, your humanity, and your conduit to the world around you.  Eventually, you'll need to come back to the near and present to avoid starvation, and when you do, the memories of that far life might serve as a blueprint for the actions you will need to take here and now.

Punch the ground!  It begins in three places.

Agency - The concept of action.  To do.
Communion - The concept of relations to perception.  To be.

But what are we doing?  What are we trying to be?  What is it that we find ourselves expanding and collapsing throughout our lives in various forms?  What would our peak expansion look like?

No matter how I look at it, the channels of reality seem to fall into three distinct categories.  Always three:

• EYE-ANIMA-SOL-SECURITY-WEALTH-WISDOM-MIND-FATHER-CONTROLLER_COMPONENT
  • Input: Collection Mechanisms
  • Decisions Interface (AI Logic)
  • Neurological perceptions feedback loop with experience-based associations and pattern-matching with which to maximize optimal resource access
• TRIANGLE-CORPUS-TERRA-LIBERTY-HEALTH-POWER-BODY-SON-ENGINE_COMPONENT
  • Agency: Sorting Mechanisms
  • Hardware Interface (Engine Logic)
  • Physical characteristics such as strength, dexterity, stamina, and constitution through which actions of the other two components flow towards tangible manifestation
• CIRCLE-SPIRITUS-LUNA-LOVE-SOCIAL-COURAGE-SPIRIT-HOLYSPIRIT-LOGICALVIEW_COMPONENT
  • Output: Communion Mechanisms - To Be
  • Simulation Interface (Gameplay Logic)
  • Relationships with accessible entities with which to derive meaning and exercise agency on the environment... Agency with sentient entities results in communion and is often achieved through mutual verb experiences perceived as "shared" experiences

These are the channels through which we develop our own personal reality.

On a related note, I am now looking for symbols which consist of an EYE, a TRIANGLE, and a CIRCLE.  I'll be collecting these symbols for tattoo research purposes.  Always three.  This pattern of a fundamental truth must surely be ancient.  If I search back far enough, I might find the voice of where it all came from.  Something in the universe created 3 out of 1.  An absolute minimum of three points is required to create a geometrical shape that is visible to our perception of form.  I need to see the code for this system.  There's a pattern there, somewhere... the pattern of "the other"... the one who is not me.  I did not induce this system of 3, yet somehow, my reality is shaped by this external truth.

"The initial signs are as prevalent in Europe as they are in the U.S."

"I see, how many do you think you can save?"

"One.  Some of the others will be fine, and I'm training as many as I can along the way... those who would listen.  There are a few.  The rest receive oblique messages and self-referencial journal entries alluding to an impending incident; I can't risk telling them any more than that."

"Thank you for checking up on things over there."

"I had to see for myself. I was... hoping it wasn't going to be true."

"The patterns are becoming more prevalent with each passing day.  Others are beginning to notice as well, but they don't know how to respond.  The system was never sustainable, but we were so far away from hitting any limitation that the momentum was simply immune to internal forces."

"Things will get a lot worse before they get better."

"They always do.  We are on the verge of another sociological revolution as humans struggle against the mathematical shift towards a new equilibrium."

"Ummm... Goodwill... Did I really have to go to France?"

"Yes, Kain.  It's what you do."

"Understood."

"Besides, it was important that you remove yourself from the situation before you could become useful.  You were too engrained within the pattern to ever have any hope of going meta on it."

"Well, I appreciate that, but French is a frickin' hard language to learn!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_theory

a.k.a. "The Sound of Popcorn" (source: k.shin)

For now, it will manifest as unrelated anomalies here and there to those who ignore the pattern... When it happens, it will happen hard and fast within the span of one human generation.  We are assigned a role in this phenomenon whether we choose to play or not.

When I heard that the boy was tragically orphaned, I seriously considered adopting him as a single parent... because I can... and the world would look more like me.

That's when it dawned on me.

My hero complex had been a source of pride for a very long time.  I identified with the hero archetype, but this savior complex comes from a dark place.  It began as a reaction to the fact that I can't stand to see people hurting... especially those close to me.  This level of empathy seems noble enough, at first.  I wanted to have the abilities of a hero so that I could have the freedom to be useful to this world in every way I have to offer.  I wanted to help the world, the city, my community, and most of all, I wanted to protect my friends from bad situations.

They never asked to be saved.  They never really asked to be helped.  Most I try to help will not even know I exist or that I'm trying.  I simply had an unhealthy need to place myself in a role as their savior.

This comes from a dark place: The hero identity is a role I play that gives me a place in this world as an affirmation of my existence.  In the process, I inadvertently put those I help into the opposite role... that of the hapless victim.  In the worst cases, my role as savior magnifies and reinforces their role as victim without helping them in sustainable ways.

That dark place stems from a combination of...

• my own desparate insatiable need for the love of others... as many as I can possibly "earn"
• a secret-not-so-secret general lack of faith in people's ability to get themselves out of bad situations without my intervention
• intense guilt issues associated with a narcissistically overpowered sense of agency with reguards to outcomes in other people's lives

The last thing my father said on his deathbed was "How is my family going to eat?"  He was suffering from dementia at the time, but that thought was focused in his mind like a laser beam as he repeated that over and over until he was unable to form words.  Those were probably the thoughts that consumed his brain in his final moments.  My father's history would indicate that he has been an intensely selfish man... but his identity was tied to his ability to be a caretaker and shepherd to others.

That is a glimpse of what I can become if I'm not careful: a selfishly motivated egotistical caretaker saving others when he doesn't really want to and making the wrong sacrifices for the wrong reasons.  This hero complex was never really about nobility, it was about my own overbearing narcissism.  Recent occurences have made that particular truth about me painfully obvious, and I had to lose something very special in order to really learn that lesson.

The title of this fable would be "The Prince and the Valkyrie".

I am until I'm not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_glass_self
For the longest time, I've associated meaning with suffering.  I wanted to be meaningful to the world around me, and the only way I knew how to do that is to follow models set by tragic heroes in various forms of media who accomplished great things and achieved sufficient density to their existence through personal trials and tribulations.  It was the pain they experienced that made them survivors, and that history of survival gave them the strength to overcome and thrive in adverse situations.

I wanted to be like that.  When I ran out of villains to fight, I began to fight myself.  I embraced tragedy and held onto it because I had no identity without pain.  To me, happy people were empty people.  I identified with the concepts of redemption, guilt, and ultimately a bitter self-hatred for the sins of my own past... somebody I used to be that I'm not, anymore.

I've embraced that for long enough.  It is time to let that go.  I'd rather be crazy than sad.  I'd rather be delusional than emo.  There is a law of controlled entropy that governs the flow of my agency.  Lucky general, synchronicity, solipsism... call it what you will... I am content being what I am... until I choose to be something else.

Hence, I have renamed this journal from "ihatekain" to "kainasylum".  That's what this is.

Can a quality product be completed without a designer?  Sure, if one of two things were true:

1. Everybody on the production team was fully capable of cohesively visualizing the ramifications of their component before actually implementing it
2. There was infinite time to iterate on the implementation of bad ideas until they become good ideas

Time is rarely infinite and trusting everyone on the team to maintain a cohesive vision of the product can be a gamble.  For that reason, most projects will involve people whose role it is to supplement the team's ability to visualize the details before time is spent on the implementation of those details.

Depending on the industry, these people are called Producers, Directors, Project Managers, or Designers.  The idea is that the cost of thinking is cheaper than the cost of doing production work before finding out that it was a bad idea, solution, or plan.  The consequence of bad design is a bad product at best and an unfinished product at worst.

So... what are the broad metrics of a designer?

• Pre-Visualization: Using associative cognition to set a good target in conjunction with analysis of resources to ensure that the target is completed in a form that satisfies the original aesthetic/pragmatic intent.  Resources include time, people, tools, and feedback.  Iteration can't be avoided, but it does have a cost associated with it.  Therefore, one who is really good at pre-visualizing will be of higher value than one who does not hone this ability at all.
  
• Two-Way Communication/Relationships: Debates will happen.  People will not blindly follow.  Reading minds is not standard practice.  The designer is not always correct and is unlikely to know everything.  Unless the designer is going to implement everything her/himself, this person will need to deal with people factors.

Nobody is perfect, and the same holds true for any Designer, Programmer, Artist, or whatever it is that describes any function for a human being.

The designer is the person who can hold it all in the head and communicate it to a team of collaborators: Scheduling, Planning, Creative Direction... these are all skill sets that can be contained in one person but may need to be delegated to others for large projects.  Knowing when to delegate is key along with other skills such as knowing when to take a gamble or cut losses.

"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
- Harvey Dent

"The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized."
- Mary Shelley

Start with one hero.
Disprove the hero's sense of reality and faith in the system to feel safe.
Destroy aspects of that hero's world until nothing remains but isolation.
If that hero survives, then the energies remaining will be dark.
And that is how a villain is born.

The hero and the villain both have equivalent drives for agency; they both wish to impose their will upon the world.  Where they differ is their need for communion.  True villains do not seek to preserve communion, and that is the difference between the hero and the villain.

"Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. "
- Eric Hoffer

And in the dream, I asked the good shepherd why one would choose to align themselves with one particular tribe or another.
He gave me not one, but four answers...

1. One believes in the vision of the tribe, and wishes to add to the force that flows in that direction
2. One enjoys the tribal customs and rituals; daily life is good when aligned with the circle.
   
3. One can learn from the tribe and evolve within the tribal sphere of events in order to better oneself
4. One is obligated to stay with the tribe, because leaving at a time of need, either in body or spirit, would be an unforgivable act of betrayal

...and then the shepherd walked away.

Just like that.

Our minds are wired to make sense of the world through discreet vocabulary.  By placing a label on something, we make the identity of that something more tangible through a combination of adjectives, verbs, and nouns.  To understand things, we need to know its identity so that we can figure out how we may interact with the concept in this reality we've created for ourselves.

Who am I?  What am I?

Why do I have these powers?  (Are you my daddy?)

One can go about answering these questions in specifics, starting with factual nouns and adjectives, going from association to association in recursive fashion until we create a conglomerate frankenstein of a definition that makes sense on the surface, but falls short on depth as the composite definition is marked by restrictions and boundary limitations that never seem to be enough to describe an entire human being's state of being.  We are always more than just a collection of nouns, verbs, and adjectives with the occasional adverb tacked on.

At any one time, we are the collection of vocabulary words for that one instance, but those words may become deprecated in the next timeslice.  Definition of the self is not a series of discrete particles but a wave of potential definitions whose first derivative over time can be distilled into a function of discrete values within the dimensions we are able to readily perceive.

If you can perceive this wave, then you can identify the particles that are associated with the wave.  But our minds are wired to see things in discrete atomic particles.  Fields of potential register only with our subconscious.  The closest we can get to perceiving the wave is to force an awareness of discrete definitions on a regular basis until definition beyond discrete particles become apparent to the conscious mind.  For some, the wave awareness comes from successive Twitter postings and the like.  For others, the wave awareness comes from the mandatory three pages of words that are to be written every morning.  These are all essentially snapshots of the wave at any one time.  Repetition of snapshots over time is the key to awareness of the wave that governs the pattern we are trying to understand.  When awareness is repeated enough, we use the word "internalized" to indicate that a wave is finally understood on an instinctive level beyond anything that words can encompass.

The method of cognizance also becomes the means of lucid actualization.  By intentionally engaging in awareness of wave potentials, one begins to alter the particle definition as it materializes... in other words, the self-fulfilling prophecy alters reality through repeated snapshots when anticipation of the next snapshot becomes a nontrivial factor of the recursive equation.

"The truth makes happen what needs to happen"
Those are the words I chose to live by.

But when you shove the truth down a person's throat, it is no longer a service but merely a selfish act that becomes more about you than the person you meant to be a friend to.  At that point, you are no longer a resource of good intentions, but a consumer of the souls and spirits of others... demanding their thoughts for the sake of your own peace of mind.  Whatever cracks you might have in your mental armor become apparent through this leakage of "truth" tainted by needy selfishness... like blood seeping from an embarrassing open wound in the middle of a dinner party.

The details will never be as important as the signal.

Projections into the future imply expectation, expectation implies obligation, and obligation implies failure.  No matter how good your intentions are, the signal will always be the same.  We exist in the present, and for that reason, the only thing that truly matters are the moments... Not the contract you are promising, but the moments you can offer at this very point in time.


I wish I could take credit for this mirror, but I can't.  This work was created by somebody with more vision than myself.

It all doesn't matter in the end.  At least now, I know what shape it is.  The standard has been set.  This thing is bigger than me.  I'm just passing through, anyway.

Two domains registered:

• http://godswithinus.com
• http://the-human-project.org

From dictionary.com:

cre·a·tiv·i·ty

the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.

I believe that people use the same problem-solving parts of their brains for creativity that they use for programming, puzzles, math equations, and games like minesweeper or sudoku.  What most of those have in common is a tangible target to achieve... known success conditions that define what it means to be finished with that task.

But what about "art"?  What problem are you trying to solve?  What is the target, and how do you realize that IT is the target?

Solving problems is only half the equation.  The most creative people in the world are the ones who are able to define really good targets and then solve the puzzle that they've created.

What makes a good target?

A ball being thrown into the air can be represented as an xyz position in space.  The first derivative of that xyz position in space is its velocity.  The second derivative of that position is acceleration.  What do we think about when we imagine the moving ball in our heads?  Do we see dots, lines, or dots+lines?  Answers to that will run the spectrum, but I would guess that most of us will see just lines.  That line is made up of changes in position over time... velocity.  Thinking about the ball in terms of position without delta time doesn't seem important... not unless we could control the flow of time to re-experience those positions.  And thinking in terms of acceleration is more work than the human brain is willing to casually do.

We think in terms of deltas.  Whether it be fiction, musical notes, visual arts, or anything else associated with the word "creativity", we respond more to the changes in an established pattern than the pattern itself.  When the changes stop becoming interesting, then folks will go meta on those changes to find a pattern within the changes that they can find meaningful.

What's the highest level of meta?

It is the aspect of an experience that people keep with them long after the experience is over.  If memories are the xyz positions of experiences in time, then the first derivative of that is emotions.  Changes in our current state result in emotions.  Emotions are the highest level of meta that our brains exist in.  The most life-changing decisions are made on this level of existence.  Hence the phrase, "that's how I felt at the time".

What do people want?

The details don't matter unless it works toward addressing the meta-level that people exist in.  People predominantly exist in the world of the first derivative.  We want to feel something.  We want deltas to remind us that things are happening and that life is not just about surviving only to end up dead anyway.  Details don't matter, but deltas do.  Boundaries are a type of delta.  Silhouettes are made of boundaries and can be just as effective as full drawings if they both enact an emotional response the same way.  A silhouette even has the potential to enact a more intimate emotional response because the emotion is there without the suggestion of details.  After the experience is over, the thing that tends to remain is the memory of the emotions from that experience, and from that, we make our judgments and decisions on where to go from there.

This is the nature of creativity in my mind.  I found a definition of art that I like...

the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

Before we get started, there is something that you should know about me.  I love melodrama.  I love making it happen... in my life, in the lives around me, in the daily news.  Melodrama  reminds me that I am a participant in the tapestry woven from the life experiences that others live around me.

It is 2:43am, and I am posting here.  Why?  Because I'm also a raving insomniac at times... tripping random flags until bonus stages are unlocked.

If you receive an invitation to join a secret society of sorts, know that the idea was birthed from a certain sick madness.  When Stalin started his mass movement, he had nothing but the best of intentions... bringing the people together for a common cause, unlocking their energies in the hopes that the people might work together to achieve the impossible.  But such devotion to the large picture is not sustainable within a universe that favors the individualist society.  The energies required to unlock the potential of a mass movement lies not in a unified belief in an external power, but moreso in the belief that the individual contribitions to the big picture are somehow key and integral to the survival of the mass movement's ideal.  Stalin was eventually forced to resort to fear and terror to maintain the status quo of energies he had previously enjoyed from willing volunteers.  This is the fate of any mass movement that threatens the sanctity of the individual contributor.  Their own internal drives to excel as human beings will be applied elsewhere unless their "will" is supplemented with a fear of consequences encouraged by the forces that seek to maintain the power given to them during a time when the people needed a heroic cause to believe in.  People are at their strongest when they have nothing to lose, but they need an incentive to shine when the gamble is more obvious.  A society's belief system can be anything you want it to be... but it must exist beyond any single individual.  The ideal must be strong enough for any junior member to internalize and carry the torch if a figurehead were to fall.  This is the concept behind a ring network of very sharp blades.

We're running out of time.  We have a little over four years left until December 21st, 2012.  I can't remember how many times I've written this very entry.  Each time slightly different, each outcome has been the same so far.  I'm hoping this time will be different.

It all begins....

NOW!

"To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium."

- Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change (1963)